2-leyer security system for hiding sensitive text data on ... · figure 1. overview of the 2-leyer...

2-Leyer Security System for Hiding Sensitive

Text Data on Personal Computers

Nouf A. Al-Otaibi College of Computer & Information Systems, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia

Email: [email protected]

Adnan A. Gutub Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute of the Hajj & Omrah Research, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia

Email: [email protected]

Abstract—High security system suitable to hide sensitive

text-data on personal computer is proposed and

implemented. The system hiding techniques involves AES

cryptography followed by image based steganography as

two layers to insure high security. The study involved

several tests to increase the capacity within the

steganography layer adopting 1 and 2 least significant bits

stego methods. The study also explores the data dependency

and its security effects by experimenting it on 30 different

fixed size images showing interesting attractive results.

Index Terms—security for personal computer, AES

cryptography, image base steganography, hiding text on PC.

I. INTRODUCTION

Hiding sensitive secret text within personal computers

(PC) has privilege of the ability to utilize some of the PC

available files to act as the cover media. Interestingly

choosing among personal images can be assumed fully

trusted confidential and only known by the PC user. This

trust to hide within PC images played as real application

behind image based steganography to secure sensitive

text data. However, the security of the cover media, i.e.

images on the PC, is based on the trust that the PC data

cannot be penetrated by any means, which is difficult to

assure and claim that the images are fully safe. This claim

justified the need to add another security layer to insure

that even for the very difficult security penetration; still

the sensitive data are not harmed or used negatively. In

other words, securing the data by steganography alone

cannot be justified and completely relayed on, making the

need to add another security layer [1]. We in this paper,

present the 2-layer security system utilizing image base

steganography as PC dependant layer as well as AES

cryptography as independent assurance layer.

2-layers security system, i.e. cryptography layer and

steganography layer are the main hiding techniques, used

to insure full protection [2] of the sensitive information

on a PC. Several sensitive text data examples can be

expressed as clear application of our proposed system

such as e-mail messages, credit card information,

Manuscript received June 9, 2014; revised August 13, 2014.

corporate data, etc. Steganography, as one of the layer’s

hiding techniques, is derived from “the Greek words

stegos meaning “cover” and grafia meaning “writing”

defining it as covered writing” [3]. Steganography, in

general, uses any cover object of media types, i.e. text,

image, audio and videos, to hide the secret data in it.

After combining the secret with the cover object (making

it PC dependant), the resulted file is known as the stego

media.

Cryptography, as the other layer within this security

system, is PC independent and completely deferent than

steganography. Cryptography is mainly encrypting the

secret plain text converting it to cipher text. Cryptography

normally requires a secret key for the encryption/

decryption process to secure the sensitive data from the

third party. In our security system, the sensitive text data

passes through the crypto layer involving a security key,

followed by the steganography layer resulting the output

file as Stego-Image. Fig. 1 shows the main overview of

the method using the two layer techniques [4].

Figure 1. Overview of the 2-leyer security system

In fact, steganography and cryptography are

completely different [5]. In steganography, the sensitive

text message is there, but nobody notices it or even aware

that it exist [6]. However, once noticed, it can be read.

Cryptography, on the other hand, is secret writing.

Anybody can see the encrypted sensitive message, but

Sensitive Secret

Text Data

Cover

Steganography

Secret Encryption/

2-Layer Security System

AES Symmetric Image Base

Cryptography Steganography

Layer Layer

Output: Stego-Image

Hiding Sensitive Secret Text Data

on Personal Computers

Lecture Notes on Information Theory Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2014

151©2014 Engineering and Technology Publishingdoi: 10.12720/lnit.2.2.151-157

Decryption Key

Image

nobody else than intended ones can read it. Usually,

crypto-methods works on the sensitive text letters to be

re-arranged, or replaced by different letters, according to

the specific scheme triggered by a secret key, that only

the sender and receiver are familiar with [7].

In this paper we proposed and implemented the two

layers technique, i.e. cryptography and steganography, to

benefit from both and give the best possible security

dedicated for PC applications . The cryptography layer is

using the well known standard AES crypto algorithms.

The steganography layer is adopting the image based

steganography hiding the encrypted data in the least

significant bit (LSB) and trying to improve it by

increasing the LSBs [8].

The paper is organized as follows. The next section,

Section 2, will give a background on related work or

similar ideas where we are describing several methods

utilizing image steganography with cryptography to

secure information that are found suitable for PC data

hiding. Section 3 presents our proposed 2-layer security

system design and modeling issues, followed by a brief

explanation of the implementation in Section 4. Section 5

gives a briefing of possible improvement in the capacity

found suitable in the system stego layer to adopt 2LSB as

well as 1LSB. Simple studies relating the security of the

system and data dependency are presented in Section 6.

We show different scenarios of fixing/changing the secret

sensitive text and observing the security effect on

different images observing interesting comparison results.

Section 7 summarizes the work in the conclusion giving

some ideas of related possible future work.

II. RELATED WORK

Several methods are found in the literature suitable for

PC security applications. Interestingly, we are focusing

on the ones utilizing cryptography and steganography

assumed suitable for PC security applications. For

example, Vikas Tyagi in [1] is describing a method for

integrating cryptography and steganography together

through image processing. The work started by clarifying

the way for encryption of the secret text before hiding it

in the image. Then, the encrypted data is to be hidden in

the image through the least significant bit (LSB) image

based steganography. The paper did not describe the

crypto algorithm used but showed advantage of practical

implementation benefits with acceptable security. The

research used random size of key that is flexible

according to size of the data. This made the third party

disability to predict the size of key and data easily.

Mehdi Hussain presents image steganography LSB

technique in [7]. He used the well known method to hide

data bits in an image by changing the LSB of each RGB

image pixels color byte. The method described storing 3

bits in each pixel by changing LSB bit of the red, green,

and blue color components, since every color is

represented by a byte. The research showed real

advantage of using LSB to hide secret data where the

change in the pixels will have very low effect and

unnoticed in observation.

Domenico in [9], proposed image steganography and

cryptography system (ISC) for securing data transfer. He

is using images as cover objects for steganography and

secret key for the cryptography. The performance of the

proposed Image-Based Steganography and Cryptography

(ISC) system was presented in his work. He compared his

results with another algorithm in the literature known as

F5 showing improved results. It was found that the

comparison with F5 is replacing the least-significant bit

of a DCT coefficient with message data which may be

degrading the fairness of the analysis. The work in [9]

makes F5 decrements its absolute value in a process

called matrix encoding claiming as a theoretically

unbreakable cryptographic method based on image based

one-time pad steganography.

Mohammad in [10] proposed a technique to implement

steganography and cryptography together to hide the data

into an image by two steps. The first step, finds the

shared stego-key between the two communication parties

by applying Diffie Hellman Key exchange protocol [10].

The second step makes the sender use the secret stego-

key to select pixels that will be used to hide secret data.

Each selected pixel will be used to hide 8 bits of data by

using LSB method. Although the method showed real

interesting security features, it was very complicated with

high unpractical overhead.

Harshitha [11] proposed a security method in which

the secret message is first encrypted and then hidden in

cover file with steganography. The encryption of the

message is randomly permuted using the secret key. The

steganography used was based on the LSB algorithm for

both embedding and extraction process. All the testing

results showed interesting features generated by Matlab

experimentations.

Shailender Gupta in [12] used two crypto techniques,

i.e. Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) algorithm and Diffie

Hellman algorithm, to encrypt the data. Then encrypted

data is hidden using LSB steganography to insure

acceptable security. The encrypted data as well as the

image pixels are all considered in their binary form. The

secret encrypted bits replace the least significant bit (LSB)

within every pixel. The presented results showed

comparison between using RSA and Diffie Hellman as

crypto methods. Interestingly, it was reported that the use

of encryption in steganalysis does not affect the time

complexity when Diffie Hellman algorithm is used

instead of RSA algorithm.

A last explored method for hiding encrypted secret

message inside a cover file has been introduced by

Joyshree Nath in [13]. He proposed an algorithm for

encrypting the secret message with relation to the work

proposed in [14]. The work modified the idea of play fair

method into a new platform where they can encrypt or

decrypt any file. Their method is dependent on the

random text-key which is to be supplied by the user. They

introduced a new randomization method for generating

the randomized key matrix to encrypt plain text file and

to decrypt cipher text file. They also introduced a new

algorithm for encrypting the plain text multiple times

increasing security by increasing system complexity.


152©2014 Engineering and Technology Publishing

All the above methods have been well thought-out to

propose our 2-layer security system for hiding sensitive

text data can be suitable for personal computers. Our

method uses cryptography and steganography as two

independent layers with all their security features [15].

The system added more studies relating the

steganography layer to the PC images bits and the secret

sensitive text data bits. Next sections will describe the

design and implementation of our system and its

comparisons in more depth.

III. THE 2-LAYER SECURITY SYSTEM MODELING

To insure high security suitable for PC applications,

benefiting from the several methods introduced in Section

2 above, our proposed system utilizes both cryptography

and steganography. In fact, cryptography and

steganography are both exploited as separate layers to

give the best possible security with independent security,

capacity, and reliability measures and improvement

adjustments.

The two-layers system can be observed as a process

flow graph (Fig. 2) clarifying the storing point of view as

well as the retrieving point of view. The cryptography

layer is using the well known standard AES crypto

algorithm, i.e. the sensitive text is going through the

symmetric key encryption using Rijndael AES algorithm.

The secret key used in encryption in the storing flow

graph is needed as is in the decryption process when

retreiving the data is desired. This AES key can be of

several lengths, i.e. 128, 192 and 256 bits, which results

in 10, 12 and 14 rounds of crypto layer operations,

respectively. Our system data length is fixed to 128 bits.

Storing sensitive secret text data Retrieving back secret text data

Figure 2. Process flow graph of the proposed 2-Layer security system

The crypto layer input as well as intermediate data can

be considered as a matrix with four rows and four

columns called states. Each element of the matrix is

composed of eight bits. AES is based on a design

principle known as a substitution-permutation network,

combination of both Substitution and Combination, and is

fast in both software and hardware as explained in [9].

The AES algorithm has four basic transformations, as

observed in Fig. 3, described briefly as follows:

1). Sub Byte Transformation - a nonlinear

transformation applied to the elements of the matrix. This

first step in each round is a simple substitution.

2). Shift Rows Transformation - a cyclical shift

operation with constant offsets, applied to the rows of the

matrix

3). Mix Columns Transformation - the third step is a

resource intensive transformation on the columns of state

under which the four elements of each column are

multiplied by a polynomial, essentially diffusing each

element of the column over all four elements of that

column.

4). Add Round Key Transformation - performs modulo

2 (XOR) operation with the round key, which is obtained

from the initial key by a key expansion procedure. The

encryption flow starts with the addition of the initial key

to the plaintext. Then, the iteration continues for (Nr - 1)

rounds (Nr being the total number of rounds). In last

round, the Mix Column step is bypassed. AES can be

understood in more depth in many resources such as [10].

Figure 3. Block diagram of AES algorithm

The steganography layer in our system is adopting the

image based steganography as in [1] hiding the encrypted

data coming out of the cryptography layer in the. In fact,

we improved the system capacity trying to increase the

hidden bits in the image using several least significant

bits (LSBs) instead of only one as will be clarified in the

next section.

The main idea used in the image based steganography

hiding in LSBs can be explained by an example of

embedding the number 200. When the number 200,

which is 11001000 in binary representation, is embedded

into the least significant bits of the three pixels as part of

the image, the resulting grid is as follows:

Pixel 1: 00101101 00011101 11011100

Pixel 2: 10100110 11000101 00001101

Pixel 3: 11010010 10101100 01100011

IV. THE SECURITY SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION



Notice that the LSB of the last byte of Pixel 3 is not

affected due to the completion of embedding all the secret

bits in the image; so it is kept unchanged.



The 2-layer security system for hiding sensitive text

data on personal computers is implemented on a visual

basic programming platform. We used visual basic

language Tenth Edition due to its flexibility, wideness

spread, and easy to learn, such that any programmer can

simply find it and redesign the system and verify our

work. The aim of this implementation is to study the

2-layer security system idea in depth and to test different

situations to enhance this important academic research

field. The implementation is putting a target of helping

security crypto designers and programmers to improve

our system idea and make it practically usable. Another

interesting feature found in our software platform, i.e.

visual basic language tenth edition, is its availability of

many libraries of pictures that can be taken as advantage

of it in all testing experimentations.

Running the system implementation begins with the

software asking for the secret sensitive text data message

and the secret key, which is representing starting the

operation of the crypto layer. Within this layer process,

the program converts each character of the sensitive

secret text into an array of binary bytes to be encrypted

using AES. The second layer, i.e. steganography layer,

also asks for an RGB image as cover media, such that its

pixels are also converted into binary form. This stego

layer can start its process at the same time while crypto

layer is running, i.e. preparing the image as binary bits,

but cannot start hiding data except after ciphertext is

generated from the crypto layer. Each pixel within the

RGB image has 3 channels, namely red, green and blue

(RGB) representing a byte of 8 bits each. Therefore,

using the least significant bits (LSB) image based

steganography in our original system hides 3 bits in each

pixel.

A. Hiding the Sensitive Data Example:

The implementation interface of the 2-layer security

system presented is shown in Fig. 4. The interface shows

the bits statistics that are generated and used by the

crypto layer and the stego layer together. The process of

hiding sensitive text starting by AES encryption followed

by the image based steganography describes an example

of hiding sensitive data in a picture as shown in Fig. 4.

Figure 4. The system interface showing bits statistics as well as the process of hiding sensitive text starting by AES encryption followed by

the image based steganography.

The picture used as cover image has 332x332 pixels as

its size. The implementation example [9] uses the

sensitive secret text data message as the poem “The cat

and the moon” for William B Yeats (1865-1939). The

algorithm first encrypt the sensitive text data (the poem)

with the secret key “nouf” and analyze the encrypted text

bits against the “max encrypted text char hidden”, which

is dependent on the image based steganography LSB

technique. The button “Marge text with img” cannot be

active except if the image is able to hold all the encrypted

bits. The output of hiding the sensitive data in the 2-layer

system is imbedded into the cover stego image. This

hiding process output stego image can be saved within

the PC by clicking the button “save stego image”.

B. Retrieving Back the Sensitive Data Example:

The interface shown in Fig. 5 can be used as an

example of retrieving sensitive data that was hidden using

the 2-layer security system. By pressing the button “Text

decryption” the program will operate retrieving back the

secret sensitive text data. It starts by sensing the LSBs

within the stego image collecting the bits together

forming the ciphertext. Generating the ciphertext is

representing reversing the stego layer process. Then, the

ciphertext is needs the secret key as inputs to the reverse

crypto layer that decrypts the ciphertext generating back

the secret sensitive data message, following Fig. 2

process of retrieving back secret text data.

Figure 5. The retrieved sensitive data from the 2-layer system interface.

Original image Stego image

Figure 6. Image changes cannot be observed due to steganography

C. Compareson Between Original Image and Stego

Image:

To check for the system security of the stego layer

using 1LSB image based steganography, both original

and stego images are observed as shown in Fig. 6. As

observed in the example of Fig. 6, the different between

the original image and the Stego image cannot be

observed. It is so low such that no one can guess its usage

in the information hiding process. The security is high

because we just use the LSB in hiding information and

the change in image is almost unnoticeable.

V. CAPACITY IMPROVEMENT STUDY IN THE

STEGANOGRAPHY LAYER OF THE SYSTEM

To study improving the capacity within the second

layer stego-images, i.e. when hiding the encrypted

sensitive data within images, we tested a picture hiding

bits within different Least Significant Bits (LSB), namely

1LSB, 2LSB, 3LSB, 4LSB, 5LSB, 6LSB, and 7LSB.

These tests are considered differently from what is

presented in [16] and [17], which can be in some relation

to the improvement of experimentations in [18]. In fact,

all our exploration analysis have been performed

assuming changing the bits showing real interesting

results (as shown in Fig. 7).

(a) (b) (c) (d)

(e) (f) (g) (h)

Figure 7. Capacity Improvement Study in Second Layer: a) Original

Image, b) Stego-Image: 1LSB Changed, c) Stego-Image: 2LSB Changed, d) Stego-Image: 3LSB Changed, e) Stego-Image: 4LSB

Changed, f) Stego-Image: 5LSB Changed, g) Stego-Image: 6LSB

Changed, h) Stego-Image: 7LSB Changed

It can be noticed clearly that the change of 1LSB or

2LSB does not show difference while more than that, i.e.

3LSB, 4LSB, 5LSB, 6LSB, and 7LSB, are resulting in

degrading the pictures quality and showing distortion.

This capacity study made the steganography used in the

second layer of our security system justified to focus on

the possibility of changing the 1LSB and 2LSB only.

Our work used 2LSB image based steganography in

the stego layer to increase the capacity of the hidden

sensitive text. The capacity within the stego layer

increased from 3 bits/pixel to 6 bits/pixel. Theoretically

the study of the security did not depend on the

observation alone, we made a detailed study testing the

difference between 1LSB and 2LSB on the changed bits.

Because this study depends heavily on the data bits

values, 30 different pictures have been involved as

detailed in the next section.

Figure 8. The fixed size 30 images used to study the system security and

its relation to data dependency within the second layer image based steganography for 1LSB and 2LSB.

VI. SYSTEM SECURITY AND DATA DEPENDENCY

ANALYSING 1LSB VS. 2LSB

The same secret sensitive text message, i.e. the poem

“The cat and the moon”, is used to be hidden on different

pictures as first testing study. Then, the picture is fixed

and the testing tries different secret sensitive text data.

A. Fixing Sensitive Secret Text-Data and Changing

Stego-images:

In this test, we select 30 different PC images (Fig. 8)

all within same size of 332x332 pixels to be used as cover

images for the stego layer.

The test compares adopting the two acceptable least

signification bit image based steganography, i.e. 1LSB

and 2LSB. Using 1LSB for hiding the secret message of

7065 bits can hide 3444 character in the image of size

332 x 332.

Using the two least signification bit (2LSB)

steganography as the stego layer capability increased the

capacity of hiding information with acceptable security.

The security testing of fixing the sensitive text to be

hidden and changing the pictures cover image resulted in

changing the bits, i.e. 1LSB and 2LSB, based on the data

used. This gives the real indication of the security of the

system which can be dependant completely on the data

available that cannot be expected, as shown in Fig. 9.

Figure 9. Number of bits changed within the 30 pictures due to hiding

the sensitive text with the 2-layer system utilizing 1LSB and 2LSB.

The changed bits in Fig. 9 is comparing between using

1LSB and 2LSB for every image. Observe that the stego

layer with 2LSB is always giving higher bits change

compared to the 1LSB, which is expected.

Figure 10. Percentage of security difference in the 30 pictures utilizing 1LSB and 2LSB in hiding the sensitive text with the 2-layer system.



We formalized the security difference percentage

based on the bits changed within every image based on

the 1LSB and 2LSB resulting the values shown in Figure

10. These results (Fig. 10) are based on the real security

percentage and not subject to personal observations.

Notes that Picture 29 is giving the lowest security

percentage in both 1LSB and 2LSB techniques. However,

several pictures, i.e. 9, 16, 18, 26, 28, are giving better

percentage of security using 2LSB compared to pictures

13, 29 using 1LSB, which is completely unexpected. In

other words, some pictures may be giving higher security

as well as higher capacity when compared to others,

which insists on running the hiding process on different

pictures and then choosing the best suitable option.

B. Fixing Stego-Images and Changing Sensitive Secret

Text-Data:

In this test, we use the picture number 9 from Fig. 8

but with smaller size 100 x 100 to test hiding within it

two different sensitive secret messages: sensitive text-1

and sensitive text-2. Our 2-layer security system hided

this text-1 and text-2 data both using the normal crypto

layer technique and the steganography layer technique.

However, the stego layer focuses on the previously

described 2LSB steganography technique. The sensitive

secret text data are:

First one: (sensitive text-1): “The last prophet,

Muhammad [peace be upon him] was born in Makkah on

Monday, 12th Rabi al Awwal. He was born as an orphan.

He was brought up by his grandfather. His uncle, Abu

Talib, took care of him when he was eight years old.

When he was ten or twelve years old, he used to look

after the sheep around Makkah.

Muhammad was loving, kind, generous, helpful and

honest man. He was an example of prefect character. He

lived a very simple life. He was fair in his dealings with

all people whether they are friends or enemies' .He was

known as Al-Sadiq and Al-Amin.

He was injured by Quraish but he completed his duty.

So, we must follow him and interrupt all people who try

to deform something about his life. And what happen in

Denmark nowadays is an example of this deed. We

should face every person try to assault him; this is one of

our duties towards him". This sensitive text-1 had 870

characters as plain text. When encrypted by the system

crypto layer the ciphertext generated resulted in 1176

characters.

Second one: (sensitive text-2): “Most people who

bother with the matter at all would admit that the English

language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that

we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our

civilization is decadent and our language — so the

argument runs — must inevitably share in the general

collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of

language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring

candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.

Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that

language is a natural growth and not an instrument which

we shape for our own purposes”. This sensitive text-2 had

601 characters as plain text. When encrypted as

ciphertext resulted in 812 characters. Our 2-layer security

system hides this text-1 data using 2LSB technique.

Picture 9 is chosen for this test because it gave the best

percentage of security shown in Fig. 10. The two

different sensitive texts have been hidden and the resulted

output stego image is shown in Fig. 11. It has been notesd

that both secret text data, i.e. sensitive text-1 and

sensitive text-2 are not showing differences in the

pictures. In fact, observing these pictures resulted that

some PC images may give similar characteristics when

different hiding secret texts, but this needs further

exploration and theoretical study.

Original image Stego image text-1 Stego image text-2

Figure 11. Comparing original and stego-image within the 2-layer security system hiding the sensitive text-1 and the sensitive text-2

VII. CONCLUSION

In this work we have shown how to design 2-layer

security system for hiding sensitive text data on personal

computers. We used cryptography layer to insure PC

independent security and stegonagraphy layer that is fully

dependant on the PC data available. The system is

implemented on visual basic platform showing interesting

results. The system steganography layer embedded data

in the image using several LSB attempts to enhance

capacity without degrading security, which resulted in

accepting the security of 1LSB and 2LSB methods. The

system implementation tested the relation between the

data to be secured and the cover images on the PC and its

security effects by experimenting it on 30 different fixed

size images showing interesting attractive results.

As future work, we want to improve the crypto layer

by testing different other symmetric key algorithms as

well as exploring the possibility of benefitting from

asymmetric key cryptography. We plan studying different

ways to improve the capacity and the security of the

system for PC applications. We want to modify the

method to make it supporting other languages like Arabic,

which may need some more research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Umm Al-Qura University for

supporting this research. Thanks to Shaqra University for

giving the corresponding author: Nouf the opportunity to

be teaching assistant and allowing her to continue MS at

UQU - Makkah.

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[17] M. Juneja and P. Sandhu, "An improved LSB based steganography technique for RGB color images," in Proc. 2nd

International Conference on Latest Computational Technologies,

June 2013, pp. 10-14. [18] Deepali, "Steganography with data integrity," International

Journal of Computational Engineering Research, vol. 2, no. 7, pp.

190-193, November 2012.

Nouf A. Al-Otaibi is currently a graduate student, pursuing Master of

Sciences (MS) degree in Computer Sciences & Engineering, at Umm Al Qura University (UQU) fully sponsored by Shaqra University under the

umbrella of Ministry of Higher Education. Her MS program at UQU is

specialized in the information security track offered by the College of Computer and Information Systems offered at UQU-Makkah Campus,

Saudi Arabia.

In 2010, Nouf completed her Bachelor of Sciences (BS) degree with honors from Taif University Saudi Arabia. Nouf followed her BS

studies by pursuing a higher diploma degree in education also from Taif

University completed by the end of 2011. She, then, worked as official trainers at the Saudi institute of Taif for around a year, i.e. until 2012,

were she has been employed by Shaqra University as Graduate

Teaching Assistant in the field of computing. At Shaqra, Nouf was assigned to teach introduction to computer science course classes as

well as matlab classes based on her strong background and experience

with programming languages such as matlab, java , c++ , php, and her outstanding ability to work with some databases like oracle and sql

Nouf research capability started by her BS graduation project about

multimedia medical records in radiology department using techniques of expert systems. Then, in her MS studies at UQU, she worked on

building a program that is reconstructing permutations from differences

sequence, which was a project related to the graduate course of analysis of algorithms. She also worked as research assistant in an official

project within UQU that involved different computing skills.

Nouf research interest focused lately on Computer and Information Security showing the ability to integrate cryptography, steganography,

networks, artificial Intelligence, image processing, and expert systems,

all from computer security point of view. She was motivated to build a high 2-level security system for hiding sensitive data in personal

computers.

Prof. Adnan Abdul-Aziz Gutub is currently working as the Vice Dean

of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute of the Hajj &

Omrah Research, within Umm Al Qura University (UQU), Makkah -Saudi Arabia.

Adnan is ranked as Professor in Computer Engineering specialized in

Information and Computer Security within UQU. He received his Ph.D. degree (2002) in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Oregon State

University, USA. He had his BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in

Computer Engineering both from KFUPM, Saudi Arabia. Adnan's research interests involved optimizing, modeling, simulating,

and synthesizing VLSI hardware for crypto and security computer arithmetic operations. He worked on designing efficient integrated

circuits for the Montgomery inverse computation in different finite

fields. He has some work in modeling architectures for RSA and elliptic curve crypto operations. His current interest in computer security also

involved steganography such as image based steganography and Arabic

text steganography. In summer 2013, Adnan has been awarded 3-month visiting scholar

grant in collaboration with Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana,

USA. Previously, Adnan have been twice awarded the UK visiting internship for 2 months of summer 2005 (at Brunel University) and

summer 2008 (at University of Southampton), both sponsored by the

British Council in Saudi Arabia. He had been involved in research of current studies related to Arabic Text Steganography in Data Security as

well as Elliptic Curve Crypto Processor Designs.

Administratively, Adnan Gutub filled many executive and managerial academic positions at KFUPM as well as UQU. At KFUPM - Dhahran,

he had the experience of chairing the Computer Engineering department

(COE) for five years until moving to Makkah in 2010. Then, at UQU - Makkah, Adnan Chaired the Information Systems Department at the

College of Computer & Information Systems followed by his leadership

of the Center of Research Excellence in Hajj and Omrah (HajjCoRE) serving as HajjCoRE director for around 3-years until the end of 2013.

Then, he was assigned his current position as the Vice Dean of HRI, i.e.

the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute of the Hajj & Omrah Research.



http://www.uqu.edu.sa/

http://www.uqu.edu.sa/

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/135968/how-hard-is-reconstructing-a-permutation-from-its-differences-sequence



2-leyer security system for hiding sensitive text data on ... · figure 1. overview of the 2-leyer...

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